Egyptian Fam Hol

So this post is about the last family holiday I took so please keep in mind this is from more of a tourist than a travellers perspective. Family holidays are an annual thing for me, each July/August we spend a week in Spain or France doing nothing but sitting by the side of a pool eating ice cream. A nice relaxing break. However, now i am older i feel this is a record slightly overplayed, i wanted somewhere new and exciting and so suggested Egypt as our 2014 family holiday, a decision i did not come to regret. This was the first time i’d ever been outside Europe, as Egypt is part of Africa i assumed this was the continent i was visiting, however, after further research i found out many people consider Sharm to be part of Asia as it lies on the East of the Red Sea. Sharm el Shiekh is, today, a really popular destination for tourists, but in my personal opinion it hasn’t been worn out such as other destinations.

So my first impression of Egypt was that it fulfilled every detail i had been told by past visitors. It is HOT. I think it was about 45 degrees whilst we were there which is by far the hottest place i have ever been, the sun is so powerful so make sure you keep hydrated, seriously i would recommend at least 2 litres of water a day (for females.) My bleak British skin burnt right through factor 30 sun cream, honestly you can’t wear too much. I can certainly hold my hand up as someone who likes to return home looking bronzed but please don’t let this effect how much sun cream you wear, you’re just going to end up with red blistery skin (so not worth it.) We tried to stay under parasols or indoors from 12-2 to avoid the hottest part of the day. Now, another thing that everyone says about Egypt- you will experience a ‘funny tummy’ (to put it nicely) at some point during your trip. This was something i dismissed almost instantly, a generic warning that is used by people who haven’t actually been to Egypt. Well i can hold my hand up and say that i spent 3 days in bed vomiting due to some bug that got most of my family to. I’m not saying that if you go to Egypt you WILL be ill, i am certainly not in the place to say that after one brief visit. But please make sure you’re careful, avoid fruit and unbranded ice cream, also an obvious one never drink tap water. We did get Hepatitis A injections before we left, you should be able to get them from your GP for free but my crappy one didn’t have the vaccination for some reason so i had to make a trip to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and pay £80, total rip off. I’m 100% not saying don’t get the vaccination just make sure you nag your GP in advance.

So onto some of the things i actually did during my stay at Sharm!

Rode Bobby the camel! It felt kind of compulsory going to Egypt and that, i was nervous and kind of fell off at the end but the man caught me and he was a nice camel. We also got up at 5am one day and took breakfast down to the beach so we could watch the sunrise, it was so incredibly beautiful!